RAPID: Long-term Unemployment and Individualist Values

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The focus of this study is the effect of personal experience on core values. Core values are thought to provide a stable foundation that strongly influences people's attitudes on public policy. Values, such as individualism and equality, are thought to be determined early in life and remain relatively resistant to change. Yet an important question concerns whether people's values change when their personal experiences challenge beliefs at the heart of these values. The intellectual merit of this project focuses on the argument that common experiences that affect many people in a significant way can influence people's core beliefs and the values that derive from those beliefs. The recent recession is the longest since the Great Depression, and the high unemployment rate is accompanied by a high proportion of people who have been unemployed for more than six months. In April 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that over 48.1% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, a figure significantly greater than the rates in recent recessions. With so many people affected by the current economic conditions, this project examines whether the personal circumstances of long-term unemployment, combined with information about other's unemployment, have reduced support for people's belief in one central core value in American politics, individualism, "the belief that people should get ahead on their own hard work" (Feldman, 1988). The broader impact of this study is to create a dataset that would be available to scholars interested in studying the impact of a significant personal experience, unemployment, on political attitudes.